"Well, you got to see Yosemite", Rob said,when I told him
I planned on driving north along the Pacific Coast Highway.
So we grabbed a road atlas, a notebook, a pencil and two pints of
beer and went planning.

The trip that I had originally only thought of as "point
car north on the PCH then drive", took on a more defined
shape at P.F. Changs Bistro that evening. Instead of going north
on the PCH, I would start with a straight shot to Yosemite,
arriving there mid-afternoon and then spending the first night
in Modesto. Then I would go on to San Francisco and head south
on the PCH back to LA.
This simplified the time management immensely, and gave me something
to do both on the northbound and southbound legs. The final plan ended
up like this:

Day 1: Laguna Beach to Yosemite, then Yosemite to Modesto.

Day 2: Modesto to San Francisco over San Rafael.

Day 3: San Francisco to Monterey by mid-afternoon, then a trip down to
Big Sur in the evening and back to spend the night in Monterey

The "tunnel view" of the Yosemite Valley. It is called
"tunnel view" since it is right at the mouth of a tunnel
that you drive through to enter the valley from the south.
From this point you can see El Capitan (the steep bare rock face
to the left), Half-Dome (the almost white peak curving up
in the background in the middle of the picture) and Bridal Veil
Falls (just to the left of the top of the right foreground
pine trees - you only see a small vertical white line).

Bridal Veil Falls. There is more water flowing through here
in spring.